Adopted child home after waiting years

After Josh and Emily Koskinen had their second son, they decided to adopt a child.

Josh, whose family adopted a child when he was a boy, remembered how important that experience was in his childhood.

“My wife and I had been thinking about what our whole family picture would look like, and we knew that adoption was something that we wanted to be a piece of the story,” Josh said.

After deciding to adopt internationally, the two began researching countries from which to adopt and settled on the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“We started the process in the summer of 2012, and we were matched with our son in April of 2013,” Emily said.

Initially, the couple expected they would be able to bring their son, Herve, home within ten months. At the same time, however, authorities in DRC began reevaluating their adoption policies. The wait stretched on for years.

“We would get picture after picture, month after month of how he was doing,” Josh said. “We were just hoping that one of those months, we would be able to take that picture.”

“We just kept waiting and knew that God would be faithful in the end,” Emily said. “We just kept waiting and praying that he would come home.”

In 2016, Herve did. The couple got the news in an email.

“I was just so happy,” Emily remembered. “I couldn’t even read the email through my tears.”

Within days, they flew to Africa. They met Herve in a hotel lobby.

“It was like seeing a celebrity for the first time,” Emily said. “I knew he was there. I was crying. It was an amazing, amazing experience.”

Emily, Josh and Herve are back at home in Decatur now, along with their other three sons.

“It’s the same feeling that I had after I gave birth to my other boys: you’re so exhausted and you can’t believe you’ve carried this baby for nine months, and then you give birth and that’s exhausting, but then you look into their face and it’s all worth it,” Emily said.

The couple point out that, while their wait is over, other families continue to wait for their adopted children.